Acosta had a knee cap injury and then a few years later a lingering injury coupled with personal problems that resulted in not going to Europe. He was then traded to Colorado for a fresh start and slowly got less minutes. He started off as a forward as a kid but as was a thing back then good players got moved to sweeper to cover up all the rest of the teams messes. He then moved to outside back and midfield. There's no way he'd have ever made it as a forward but with coaches who worked with as an attacking midfielder he might have been a lot better up top.
FWIW, Berhalter is 5'9" and 154 pounds per MLS. Completely in line with most of our CMs including Acosta and Morris. You are probably right about the next level, though. Top 4 CMs tend to be 6' on average. That said, LDLT put in a few seasons at La Liga so it's not impossible.
The first time I remember noticing Kellyn was when he was the youngest member of the U17 WC squad. IIRC he was 15 and played LB. Kellyn never had personal problems that prevented him going to Europe. Kellyn wanted to go, Dallas had offers that they did not want to accept, their relationship soured and they parted company. I know for a fact Schalke was very interested and made inquiry offers for him in 2017.
Musah did start for a Serie A team (top half of table) as recently as ... three weeks ago. Does look to me like Tyler adams didn't track back on the first Dutch goal in 2022. (content won't show but you can find easily on youtube.)
talk about moving the goal post. Poor Tyler went from the stud usmnt dm to adjusting your expectations because he isn't fit so asking for a quality performance compared to a fit player isn't reasonable. Also really interesting take on the focusing too much on the events surrounding goals. I am going to try to do that, I promise I will spend the next 8 hrs of my life trying to adjust my focus away from goals...and more to morale victories. If they lose each group match 3-0 can I walk away happy and thinking , 'yes they made mistakes on the goals'..but what about the rest of the match was that a good performance, if it was I will be happy with their performance overall' It is going to be difficult to do fyi....everything in a match revolves around goals. you either score in a possession or you don't. Scoring and stopping the other team from scoring is happening at all times in a match. there is no time when goals is not the center of the game. So, I guess you mean more pre/post game vibes? is the team upbeat, good with fans? is that how we should just the team?
He did but that is his story to tell. I don't think that affected his not going to Europe but did make him want a clean start away from Dallas. He did have some sort of long term injury (kind of like Ferreira) that affected his play for a couple of years. I've known him since he was 8 or 9 and playing per-select against my son.
I just read this whole thread because my car is getting an oil change. One thing not mentioned is the fact that we started a team that may be close to our starting team and Germany started their A team. I may be off on a German player or two, but I think that is their starting team. Other than the fast goal, we hung in pretty tough against a really good team with what we put on the field. All the talk about Adams, I have to agree with the vast majority of it. He has been better, he has lost a step, he doesn't offer much to the attack. We almost need two TA's when he's on the field. That is up to the coach to recognize and repair. I personally think he should have put out the first team for all of the warm up games. I could be totally wrong about all of this, but like I said, I'm sitting home waiting to get my rig back and bored.
Agreed we should have started our starters for both friendlies. Our starting 11 has barely played with each other. The last 30 minutes of the game can be to look at rotation players.
The only thing that Adams could have accomplished by following Sane was to tell him good goal. Who was Jedi marking? How about Weston? Dest?
If Adams wasn't watching the ball, he might have been able to stay in front of Sane. Jedi was marking Havertz on the wrong side. Weston was marking space, trying to prevent a ball going to zone 14 (he obviously wasn't successful). Dest was smack dab in the middle of zone 14, marking space. The whole balance of the defensive structure was off. We had numerical advantage on the play, and squandered it badly.
Adams was a defensive beast v Germany making 9 tackles. He also started one of the US' best chance when he dispossessed Sane and then made a quick short pass to Malik. Tillman does what he does best and plays a one touch into the path of Pulisic and we are off to the races 3 on 3 v the German back line! After Pulisic is chopped down and the advantage is played if Balo picks his head up he could have delayed cut back to a streaking Tillman who had beaten Kimmich on the 50 yard sprint to receive the cut back cross! See 4:34